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So, in between getting Kiddo through the last of 4th grade (sniff), getting ready for summer (Rhode Island!), and copy edits for MRS. ROOSEVELT'S CONFIDANT (hair-pulling and nail-biting), I've also been researching and writing book #6 in the Maggie Hope series, THE QUEEN'S ACCOMPLICE.
This is now two books ahead for readers — and I want to be careful not to spoil anything for anyone. But I can say that THE QUEEN'S ACCOMPLICE will follow Maggie from Washington, D.C. back to London. And in it, we'll meet a new baddie — the Blackout Ripper — a serial killer (or, rather, a "sequential murderer," since the term "serial killer" wasn't in use back then) who preys on the smart, ambitious, professional women.
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Good question.
Jack keeps coming up in the public consciousness as well as literature and pop culture for many reasons. Any plot about about the Jack the Ripper (or a new Ripper) contains coded discussions of the dangers of unrestrained male sexuality, misogynist fears of female sexuality, and censure of female autonomy.
And so I turned to the scholarly book, A CITY OF DREADFUL DELIGHT, a feminist interpretation of the Ripper murders and their effects. The book also explores how Jack the Ripper (and his many fictional variations) has acted as a catalyst for women’s anger against male violence against women in the public sphere. As author Judith R. Walkowitz argues: "The Whitechapel murders have continued to provide a common vocabulary of male violence against women, a vocabulary now more than one hundred years old. Its persistence owes much to the mass media’s exploitation of Ripper iconography. Depictions of female mutilation in mainstream cinema, celebrations of the Ripper as a 'hero' of crime intensify fears of male violence and convince women that they are helpless victims."
And so, in other words, if I'm going to take on the Ripper myth as a feminist writer with a strong heroine, I'd better tell it in a radically different way. And that's my goal. In the usual Ripper stories and films, the Ripper's challenger is a man — a detective or a journalist usually. The female victims are peripheral to the hunt/catch story.
In this newest Maggie Hope book, I want to turn that traditional Ripper narrative on its head.
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I'm also doing research on women in police force during World War II. Yes! It's true!
And not just researching, but writing, too — it's just a wee bit too early for me to feel comfortable showing any pages. But please rest assured there are about 100 rough pages written, 100 more sketched out pages, and a whole slew of notes and ideas. Maggie's met a lot of horrific people in wartime, but this — a serial killer — is a first. And it's scary. (I'm scaring myself sometimes, which must be good, right?)
Dear lovely readers, please leave a comment here to be entered to win an ARC of MRS. ROOSEVELT'S CONFIDANTE!
Just finished rereading the first 3 Maggie Hope books and just this second finished the Prime Ministers Secret Agent..What a great gift as a reader, I am on vacation and have the time. I am an American Girl who spent a lot of my childhood in Europe, where the war seemed to just happen..Thank for you for all your insight and deep character development..Loved the books!! Keep writing..it is a gift to all of us..:)
ReplyDeleteLisa Marie
LALisaMarie1@Gmail.com
I recently read the first four Maggie Hope mysteries and loved them. You might be interested to know that one of my neighbours also loved them and can't wait for the next one. She is 96 and is old enough to remember the war vividly. She loved your tales of life back then and your descriptions of London and Berlin. She says it brought so many memories of nights spent around the wireless listening to the BBC news from Britain.
ReplyDeleteOn the subject of Jack The Ripper, I believe that the long fascination with the crimes is because the killer was never caught. I do get annoyed at a lot of TV documentaries and dramas about it because they concentrate solely on who was it and the people who get completely overlooked are the victims. They were people just like us, not merely pieces in a puzzle. There was one series back in the early 70s made as a standalone mini-series by the team of the British police drama Z-Cars. In that they had a budget of almost nothing and minimal sets but they did a fantastic job of going right into the social conditions in the East End in the 1880,s and the lives of the victims. It is such a tragic story and one that needed to be told. They certainly weren't walking the streets looking for custom out of choice. Two of them were widows who when their husbands died had no means of support and were forced into it to just to survive. It was such a horrendous history that at one point one of the detectives said, "Much more of this and we will be accusing Jack The Ripper of mercy killing." Their lives were that bad.
I read books 1 through 5 and they were awesome. When will the Queen's accomplice be released?
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